Major League Baseball

What we learned in MLB this week: Gerrit Cole is on a Cy Young mission

Updated Apr. 27, 2023 10:05 a.m. ET

Every Thursday, Jordan Shusterman takes a look at one thing from each MLB division that we’ve learned from the past week of action.

AL East: Gerrit Cole's looking as good as ever

As the Yankees once again battle a litany of injuries to key players and continue to search for some momentum on offense, there’s one thing they can count on every five days or so: Cole absolutely dealing. Still in search of his first career AL Cy Young Award — though he probably deserved it in 2019 — Cole has come out of the gate with five spectacular starts. Is a 0.79 ERA with 36 strikeouts and just 10 walks in 34 innings good? I feel like that’s pretty good. Moreover, Cole has allowed zero homers after leading the AL in gopher balls in 2022 — despite four of his 2023 starts coming at Yankee Stadium with the oh-so-inviting short porch in right field.

No matter how good Cole is, the competition for the AL Cy Young is going to be stiff. Luis Castillo, Shane McClanahan, Sonny Gray and Shohei Ohtani have been marvelous. And in case you missed it, Jacob deGrom pitches in the American League now, too. Cole will have to definitively earn this award over a tremendously deep group of contenders. As arguably the game’s most durable starting pitcher, Cole’s edge over his competitors will likely come in the innings category. If he can keep the ball in the yard even 20% more than he did last year and throw 30 more innings than anyone else in the AL, that first Cy might just finally be his.

The Yankees have a good bit else to figure out if they are to get back in the mix for the division lead, but Cole sure is doing his part. He’s worth every penny.

AL Central: White Sox's season already slipping away

I’ll be honest, I was cautiously optimistic that hiring a competent manager in Pedro Grifol and some better injury luck would have the White Sox back in the postseason mix in 2023 after last year’s mess. Well, if you thought last year’s 7-12 start with an eight-game losing streak mixed in was disappointing (not to mention the .500 campaign that followed), how are we feeling about their current 7-18 start with a seven-game losing streak still in progress? Fun times on the South Side!

Shut out for a second consecutive game on Wednesday in Toronto, the White Sox haven’t scored in their past 24 innings. Their big free-agent splash, Andrew Benintendi, is hitting .295 but slugging .352 with zero home runs. Lance Lynn and Michael Kopech each have ERAs over 7.00. Tim Anderson is hurt again. The team as a whole has a .652 OPS, good for 28th in MLB. The team ERA is 5.62, good (bad) for 29th in the league ahead of only Oakland.

Every year, there are bad baseball teams. Most of the time, the bad baseball teams consist of primarily bad baseball players, so you can prepare yourself going into the season that said team will indeed be bad.

The White Sox were not supposed to be a bad baseball team. Even if you very reasonably liked Minnesota and Cleveland substantially more when projecting the AL Central, you’d have a tough time finding someone who looked at this Chicago roster and thought it'd be in the express lane to 100 losses alongside rebuilding Detroit and Kansas City. But that’s where the White Sox are, zooming along in the HOV lane with the miserable fans as their passengers. I’d love to be proven wrong, but last year’s record of 81-81 is probably a best-case scenario at this point, no matter what new manager Grifol says.

AL West: Yordan Álvarez's health scares both concerning and fascinating

For as much praise as I will consistently heap on Álvarez as one of, if not the best hitter on the planet, I continue to be similarly in awe of the way he seems to be able to manage a variety of injuries and perform at such a ridiculous level. This theme stems back to the basic fact that I often like to remind people of: Álvarez had surgery ON BOTH KNEES in 2020 as a 23-year-old. That’s not exactly a medical marker you love to see for a player that young if you’re projecting long-term health and success, but Álvarez has remarkably not missed any time on the IL for knee issues since. That feels like quite an achievement for a player his size that has also spent a good chunk of time roaming the outfield, let alone all the steps he’s taken during his frequent trips around the bases.

But while his knees haven’t been a concern since surgery, other issues have popped up in recent years. Álvarez was reportedly dealing with pain in both of his hands for much of the 2022 season — you know, when he finished third in MVP voting and had a postseason for the ages en route to a World Series — that carried over into 2023, costing him nearly all of this year’s spring training. He played in just two spring games, leaving some to wonder if he’d get off to a slow start in 2023.

Ha. Yordan? Slow start? Good one.

A .900 OPS through his first 20 games seemed to suggest all was well with his hand, but then a new ailment came up. On Monday, reports came out that Alvarez was heading back to Houston instead of going to Tampa Bay to face the Rays after dealing with neck discomfort.

So wait, he’d been dealing with it for the past week? Like the week when he went down to Atlanta and delivered the three biggest hits of the weekend, including two titanic homers en route to a sweep of the Braves? That was all done with neck discomfort? Imagine how far he’d have hit those balls if he was feeling 100 percent.

Let me be clear: I am not doubting Álvarez has been in legitimate pain with these various ailments. I hope he can get whatever he needs to stay on the field with the least amount of pain possible, and I hope this neck issue is nothing serious. But I cannot deny being at least mildly amused by consistently hearing about him dealing with these injuries while simultaneously terrorizing every pitching staff tasked with facing him. If anything, it only makes me appreciate his greatness even more.

NL East: So much is going wrong for the Marlins, and yet …

Let’s consider some facts about the 2023 Marlins: Jazz Chisholm Jr. has the highest strikeout rate among all qualified hitters; Jean Segura has the lowest OPS; Avisaíl García has somehow been even worse this year than last year's disappointing debut season with the Fish; defending NL Cy Young winner Sandy Alcántara has a 5.04 ERA.

If you told me all of these key pieces were struggling to this degree, I’d assume the Marlins were at or near the bottom of the National League standings. Instead, they miraculously remain around .500 thanks in large part to hitting savant Luis Arráez, a fully healthy Jorge Soler, and some late-game bullpen heroics from the likes of AJ Puk, Dylan Floro and Matt Barnes, which have contributed to a laughably lucky 6-0 record in one-run games. Skip Schumaker for NL Manager of the Year? Sure!

Jazz Chisholm hits a solo home run to extend the Marlins' lead over the Braves

The minus-39 run differential screams that this team is simply not good no matter how you slice it, but I’m wondering if some positive regression for guys like Alcántara and Chisholm could help keep this team afloat. The Marlins aren’t catching the Braves or Mets no matter what, but I can still squint and see them hanging around the wild-card discussion if some of the more reliable pieces can start performing as expected. It’ll have to start happening soon, though.

NL Central: The Pirates might just stick around a while

If you asked me before Opening Day for one reason to watch the Pirates in 2023, it would unquestionably be superfreak shortstop Oneil Cruz, a player singularly capable of jaw-dropping, mind-bending highlights on both sides of the ball. When Cruz suffered a broken ankle on April 9 that will keep him on the shelf for perhaps the rest of the season, I was obviously devastated for Cruz and Pirates fans alike. But for a team projected to lose 90-plus games again, I also wondered what exactly would especially compel me to tune in to their games if Cruz was out. Fast-forward a few weeks and suddenly the 17-8 Pirates have become a top-priority watch on a daily basis. With Andrew McCutchen turning back the clock and leading the charge on offense in his triumphant return to the Steel City, young players like Jack Suwinski and Rodolfo Castro have stepped up in Cruz’s absence. The starting rotation has been shockingly solid, and the bullpen headlined by All-Star David Bednar has mostly been nails.

The Pirates rank eighth in MLB in ERA (3.66) and seventh in OPS (.771). But two other underlying data points stand out as even stronger indicators for the team’s hot start: Pittsburgh ranks third in MLB in hard-hit rate on offense (behind only the Braves and Rays) and third in MLB in lowest hard-hit rate allowed by its pitching staff (behind only the Cubs and the Rays). That’s a recipe for sustainable success.

Andrew McCutchen hits a three-run homer to extend the Pirates' lead

On top of the strong on-field results, the Bryan Reynolds extension is another promising indicator of this team’s commitment to winning baseball games sooner rather than later.

The parallels to last year’s Orioles are obvious, and if this rebuild is indeed ahead of schedule, it’ll be fascinating to see how the front office acts as the season progresses.

The Brewers look great and the Cubs are much improved, as well. But the Cardinals are off to their worst start since 1973, clearing the path in the division for this exciting Buccos squad to remain relevant deeper into the summer than anyone could’ve expected.

NL West: Fernando Tatís Jr. is back, but how long until it’s all clicking?

Until Tatís returned from his suspension, it was easy to wave off San Diego’s uneven start as a result of simply not being whole. Surely, all would be cured once Tatís’ name was penciled into the Padres lineup card ahead of fellow superstars Juan Soto, Manny Machado and Xander Bogaerts. Right?

… Right?

Er, not so fast.

I’m nowhere close to pressing the panic button on what was supposed to be a dream season in San Diego, but I am starting to wonder how long it’s going to take to get all four of these guys rowing — or should I say raking — in the same direction. Bogaerts has looked like a bona fide MVP candidate. Tatís is clearly still getting re-acclimated to facing the best pitching in the world after a year off. Soto and Machado, though, remain stuck in the mud, which is drastically limiting this team’s ability to consistently score runs to a shocking degree. Through Tuesday’s games, the Padres were averaging the same runs per game (3.68) as the Washington Nationals. That is a real fact about a team that we thought could have one of the best lineups in the league — even without Tatís.

So if not the full-blown panic button, how worried should we be? As frustrating as it’s been to watch Soto routinely pass up hittable pitches in favor of potential walks, it’s hard to fault him too much for continuing to get on base as long as he’s scoring runs (he’s second on the team behind Bogaerts with 16). Machado, on the other hand, is simply not impacting the ball whatsoever and isn’t drawing nearly enough walks to balance out this apparent power outage. There are red flags galore, from career-high strikeout and ground ball rates to a career-low hard-hit rate amounting to an ugly .536 OPS. Machado has been so consistent for so long that this level of poor performance is fairly stunning to witness for even a month-long sample. If he’s not hiding an injury, it’s tough to grapple with how bad he’s looked. The Padres can't afford to not get him going.

I am confident Tatís will heat up in short order. But Machado and Soto need to step up sooner rather than later. Perhaps it’s unfair to focus squarely on these four guys and not lay more blame down the order, where Austin Nola, Ha-Seong Kim, and Trent Grisham are still living below the Mendoza Line. But we all knew the story of the 2023 Padres would be about the fantastic four atop the order, so it’s also unrealistic to pretend the spotlight will shift away from them at any point. It comes with the territory of being such a special collection of talent. I still expect to see it click soon.

Jordan Shusterman is half of @CespedesBBQ and a baseball writer for FOX Sports. He has covered baseball for his entire adult life, most notably for MLB.com, DAZN and The Ringer. He's a Mariners fan living in the Eastern Time Zone, which means he loves a good 10 p.m. first pitch. You can follow him on Twitter @j_shusterman_.